August 2019 – DAZ 3D New User Challenge – Free Month (With a Twist)

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  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,818

    richardandtracy_e725004c1a said:

    I think at the moment all the inspirons [particles of inspiration sleeting through the universe] are missing me, and I'm left feeling a bit 'mehh' about this challenge. It may change later, especially if one hits hard.

    My thinking was similar, when I saw the challenge pop up, I had another idea for what I might give a go.  Gave it a thought for a bit and came up with this.  I look at the reference images as a concept and see where I can take it.  So, I am going with Elliandra's image.  I am not going to go into much more detail regarding the image as Ruris, rcbcgreenpanzer have noted, but my feedback is in reference to the image as a whole.  She seems to be in agony over something, but what is unkown why.  For example, maybe you could have posed her with only a single earing and the other inside the pyrimad and she cannot figure out how to get it back.  You know, girls and their jewelry...

    So here is my go at this ("Wishing Well").  I have changed the mood to a night scene and added an additional character for some tension in the scene.  My thought for this was a follow on to my Moonlight Kiss scene in the June NUC.  Here Cora decided to go to the wishing well and make a wish following her kiss, but something else happened when she went to touch the orb.  Looks like she may have stirred up some trouble. 

    As I typically try to create two submissions for these challenges, I have a feeling that L'Adair or Linwelly girls with swords may end up comming to the rescue.  We will see.

    Really nice job and definitely took the concepts to a completely different place heart I really like her posing and expression. The only feedback Id give is it would be awesome to see what is coming out of the "portal" a bit more. Its sort of dim (though that may be as intended) but really great job! smiley

  • DAZ_ann0314 said:

    The only feedback Id give is it would be awesome to see what is coming out of the "portal" a bit more. Its sort of dim (though that may be as intended) but really great job!

    I agree, as the horns on the demon are not visable.  I have a mesh light off camera left that throws some of the blue light to the pedestal, but it did not bring out any of the demon details.   I think the portal could use more work, while it is an emissive plane and I had the emission color the red shade, I forgot to color plane itself.  I may try something else there too and see how it turns out.  

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252

    DAZ_ann0314 said:

    The only feedback Id give is it would be awesome to see what is coming out of the "portal" a bit more. Its sort of dim (though that may be as intended) but really great job!

    I agree, as the horns on the demon are not visable.  I have a mesh light off camera left that throws some of the blue light to the pedestal, but it did not bring out any of the demon details.   I think the portal could use more work, while it is an emissive plane and I had the emission color the red shade, I forgot to color plane itself.  I may try something else there too and see how it turns out.  

    Sometimes when a plane is turned into an emissive the light is only coming off 1 side.  It could be you have the light emitting side on the bottom.

  • Kaye KayeKaye Kaye Posts: 210

    Okay *bites nails* this is my first time posting here, but something about @Leana's image pulled me in.

    I really like how the same colours are used on the figure, via clothing hair and makeup. And then these colours are reflected in the butterflies and background. I would say that I'd prefer the image to be a little grounded--even just a light shadow under the figure, but that's my personal choice. The whole image still works very well without it.

    I only started the addiction that is Daz just before Christmas, so I have no clue about creating an image in 3DL. I let the idea of Leana's image stew in the back of my brain, before I started to play around yesterday. I looked back at the image as I was nearing the time to render and realised I wanted more cohesive colours and that the eyes--so distinctive in Leana's image--needed that in mine too. Medusa's eyes are her main weapon after all ;-) Also I realised after that, instead of being surrounded by butterflies, I'd surrounded my figure with snakes!

    medusa4.jpg
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  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited August 2019
    Kaye Kaye said:

    Okay *bites nails* this is my first time posting here, but something about @Leana's image pulled me in.

    I really like how the same colours are used on the figure, via clothing hair and makeup. And then these colours are reflected in the butterflies and background. I would say that I'd prefer the image to be a little grounded--even just a light shadow under the figure, but that's my personal choice. The whole image still works very well without it.

    I only started the addiction that is Daz just before Christmas, so I have no clue about creating an image in 3DL. I let the idea of Leana's image stew in the back of my brain, before I started to play around yesterday. I looked back at the image as I was nearing the time to render and realised I wanted more cohesive colours and that the eyes--so distinctive in Leana's image--needed that in mine too. Medusa's eyes are her main weapon after all ;-) Also I realised after that, instead of being surrounded by butterflies, I'd surrounded my figure with snakes!

    I don't like snakes.

    But I really like your render! Very interesting direction you took the concept. Bravo!

    And welcome to the challenges. I hope we see a lot more of you and your work here.

    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • guess I'll have a stab (pun intended) at L'Adair's sword fight.

    1) melee fights are short and ugly. even the sport of fencing only lasts seconds before a touch occurs which represents either a kill or a debilitating hit

    so the idea of Hollywoodese sword fights always look like someone handed ballet dancers swords.

    figured since we are supposed to add the previous months stuff into our submissions I worked on the expressions the environment lighting and poses.

    I call it : Escaping Bandits. 

     

    sewer1g.jpg
    3840 x 2160 - 4M
  • Kaye KayeKaye Kaye Posts: 210
    L'Adair said:
    Kaye Kaye said:
    I don't like snakes.

    But I really like your render! Very interesting direction you took the concept. Bravo!

    And welcome to the challenges. I hope we see a lot more you and your work here.

    Thanks, @L'Adair :)

    I hope to join in more. Mostly just I flail about on my own ;-)

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,051
    edited August 2019
    Kaye Kaye said:

    Okay *bites nails* this is my first time posting here, but something about @Leana's image pulled me in.

    I really like how the same colours are used on the figure, via clothing hair and makeup. And then these colours are reflected in the butterflies and background. I would say that I'd prefer the image to be a little grounded--even just a light shadow under the figure, but that's my personal choice. The whole image still works very well without it.

    I only started the addiction that is Daz just before Christmas, so I have no clue about creating an image in 3DL. I let the idea of Leana's image stew in the back of my brain, before I started to play around yesterday. I looked back at the image as I was nearing the time to render and realised I wanted more cohesive colours and that the eyes--so distinctive in Leana's image--needed that in mine too. Medusa's eyes are her main weapon after all ;-) Also I realised after that, instead of being surrounded by butterflies, I'd surrounded my figure with snakes!

    Really nice image! I really like the color scheme and her expression :)

    I just have two minor remarks:

    • Some of the snakes on top are a bit cropped, I would have set the camera slightly further away so they're completely included in the frame
    • I love the background colour but I would probably have used one a touch lighter so that the snakes contrast a bit more. Unless your idea was actually to have them blend a bit in the background, in which case forget that remark smiley

     

    Post edited by Leana on
  • Kaye KayeKaye Kaye Posts: 210
    Leana said:
    Kaye Kaye said:

    Really nice image! I really like the color scheme and her expression :)

    I just have two minor remarks:

    • Some of the snakes on top are a bit cropped, I would have set the camera slightly further away so they're completely included in the frame
    • I love the background colour but I would probably have used one a touch lighter so that the snakes contrast a bit more. Unless your idea was actually to have them blend a bit in the background, in which case forget that remark smiley

     

    Thanks, Leana! :)

    I seem to be in a 'chopping bits off phase', tbh. I have a gargoyle baking right now who's not fully in the frame, lol

    I'm with you on the background, and in two minds about it. It was okay in the viewport, but as it rendered it became a little too dark and strong. Though I'm happy for the snakes to fade back a bit, as well.

     

  • ElliandraElliandra Posts: 483

    Morning All!

    Kaye Kaye - That is a fantastic render! If you've only been doing this since Christmas then you're doing a fabulous job learning Studio!! I love the strong translucency you have on the skin it gives her an otherworldly feel which is perfect for Medusa! The only thing I would do is to lighten the red on the snake eyes (or put a red emissive on them so they glow) so you really get the feel that they are watching you lol TBH I think the cutting off of snake heads doesn't bother me as the main focus of the image is Medusa herself wink

     

    Dragoneyes002 - I love the attention to detail you have in the scene from the body in the background to the shadow on the back wall on the left! There are only a couple of things I would adjust with the scene, change the water color as it has a "grimy" feel to it while the rest of the scene is much cleaner, lower/soften the skin specular on the girl a little bit so it matches the rest of the figures and then add a touch more blood to the scene since the pirate did just get his arm chopped off (but of course then that might get into the grey area of gore/non-family friendly). Overall your render is really well composed and made me laugh when I saw the look on the Pirate's face!! Great Job!

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,051
    I call it : Escaping Bandits.

    Great image! I really like the expressions, and the shadow of the other bandit in the background.
    One thing I noticed is that the planks in the foreground are neat blocks, they should probably have a bit more relief/texture

  • sueyasueya Posts: 826

    My image is inspired by @Kismet2012 's image of the surfer at the bus stop.

    The story behind this image is that Robert has just moved into his new loft apartment. He is feeling lonely and depressed because his relationship with his partner has just ended - this is why he had to move.

    I am wondering whether the lighting is right - there are very few shadows although shadows are switched on. Also do I need more cases or some boxes adding to the image?

  • ElliandraElliandra Posts: 483

    @Sueya
    Did you by chance render the male figure separately from the rest of the environment? He is not casting any shadows is why I'm asking. If that is the case if I might suggest rendering out the room with the cases as a background image then rendering him on the sofa with ground shadows turned on in the Iray Render settings under environment, this will let you blend together just make sure you use the same light setup as the background image. For your question on the additional crates/boxes I would say yes but also rotate the angle of the render so the back wall and sofa are on an angle to give the scene some more visual interest! As it is now that's a really looooong wall to fill up with stuff unless you are going to use instances lol

  • sueyasueya Posts: 826
    Elliandra said:

    @Sueya
    Did you by chance render the male figure separately from the rest of the environment? He is not casting any shadows is why I'm asking. If that is the case if I might suggest rendering out the room with the cases as a background image then rendering him on the sofa with ground shadows turned on in the Iray Render settings under environment, this will let you blend together just make sure you use the same light setup as the background image. For your question on the additional crates/boxes I would say yes but also rotate the angle of the render so the back wall and sofa are on an angle to give the scene some more visual interest! As it is now that's a really looooong wall to fill up with stuff unless you are going to use instances lol

    It is all one image. The image is rendered in 3Delight if that makes any difference. The distant light is coming through the window. There is also an ambient light to the right of the sofa. I also added a spotlight going up from the uplighter but you can only see the stand for this. Perhaps I need to move the camera away from the sofa so you see the whole lamp.

  • RurisRuris Posts: 123

    My first step is just put only the character into a scene and checking if the poses, cloth clipping, everything come together. 

    Then, find some environment to take the shoot, this part are still quite difficult as I just have to pray the HDRI can make it looks reasonably good.

    Just putting this out for some review on poses, composition (currently uncropped):

    a) need some fire glowy effect from the left. Trying to get a glow on the edge of the katana will be tough without other parts being overly bright (without some serious mask painting work in PS)

    b) need some white rim on the right to get other parts into focus, fox ears, hair, 

    20% complete as of now.

    One thing that I'm really interested, how long does it take for more experienced user to perform all the steps, to create the samples for this contest?

    Fox 03 improvement.png
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  • RurisRuris Posts: 123
    edited August 2019

    Took almost 6hours for all processes (excluding render time). Most probably way too long. Need to hear from more experienced user, if this can be done in 2h or something. Anyway, here's my ninja fox girl.

    https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/838726/

    Post edited by Ruris on
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited August 2019
    Ruris said:

    Took almost 6hours for all processes (excluding render time). Most probably way too long. Need to hear from more experienced user, if this can be done in 2h or something. Anyway, here's my ninja fox girl.

    https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/838726/

    Don't be so hard on yourself; 6 hours to set up this scene is good, imo. Some scenes fall into place easily, and take only a few hours. Other scenes will take a few hours just to get one detail right, (especially if dforce is involved!) I have one image I worked on for about six weeks, off and on, (here, if you're curious.)

    Your take on Linwelly's image is very nice. The wide format works well and the glow of the fire on the edges of the fox tail is really nice touch.

    However, as you have the full character in the scene, I'd move her up in the camera's view so that her skirt isn't cut off, or come closer to her, (either moving the camera closer or using the camera settings controls to zoom in closer,) and cut off about a third of her from the bottom. Also the tree/branches you used look much less realistic than the other elements of the scene. I like that they add to the visual texture without overpowering the image, but they still draw my eye because they look, to me, cartoonish and out of place.

    Aside from those two nit-picking details, this is a lovely image. And something tells me that girl enjoys her job, maybe a little too much. If she came at me like that, with that smile, I'd know she was going to be the last thing I ever saw!

    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • ElliandraElliandra Posts: 483
    sueya said:
    Elliandra said:

    @Sueya
    Did you by chance render the male figure separately from the rest of the environment? He is not casting any shadows is why I'm asking. If that is the case if I might suggest rendering out the room with the cases as a background image then rendering him on the sofa with ground shadows turned on in the Iray Render settings under environment, this will let you blend together just make sure you use the same light setup as the background image. For your question on the additional crates/boxes I would say yes but also rotate the angle of the render so the back wall and sofa are on an angle to give the scene some more visual interest! As it is now that's a really looooong wall to fill up with stuff unless you are going to use instances lol

    It is all one image. The image is rendered in 3Delight if that makes any difference. The distant light is coming through the window. There is also an ambient light to the right of the sofa. I also added a spotlight going up from the uplighter but you can only see the stand for this. Perhaps I need to move the camera away from the sofa so you see the whole lamp.

    Ok yea the shadows under the sofa and crates looked like Iray render shadows lol I haven't rendered in 3Delight in years so will be no help to you on the lighting blush

  • ElliandraElliandra Posts: 483

    @Ruris
    Great scene I really like the movement you have in there!

    I agree with L'Adair on the branches at the side of the scene. I also noticed a couple of things, the mask is poking into one of her Kitsune ears and the bottom edges of the skirt have some hard edges on them (smoothing should take care of this for you!).

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,799

    Hi everybody, I want to provide some additional info on my render as I didn't manage to add that in time before the NEC went life.

    So the character I Eilish https://www.daz3d.com/eilish-for-genesis-3-female with the "elven" form which has the blue skin colour, I changed that a bit to have a darker shade in the skin but left the skin otherwize untouched, the facepaint comes with the character though I didn't use the original faste texture with the markings but a new opacity map from the facepaint and added that into the emissive channel plus changed the colour for that purble. In a similar way I made the eyes glow a bit.

    the hair is FireGem Hair https://www.daz3d.com/fireGem-hair-for-genesis-3-female-s-and-genesis-2-female-s which gave me fits for moving (some of you noticed ;)) With the moves that come with it one can move the parts that are in front to the back, averything else that moved is below chest level which is rather useless. With more time on my hands I would have tried to use the bones of neck and shoulder to give it more movement (or change to a different hair altogether).

    the "armor" is from Eagle-Guard Armor (https://www.daz3d.com/eagle-guard-armor-for-genesis-3-female-s-and-genesis-3-male-s), the lower part being this one Eagle-Guard Torso Armor and Kilt https://www.daz3d.com/eagle-guard-armor-for-genesis-3-female-s-and-genesis-3-male-s

    this actually does have a nice cover for the whole body, this is one of the rare occasions where I went for the "magic bikini - roleplay" version as with the drow/darkelf I'm already in the high fantasy genre.

    the background is the age old but still nice https://www.daz3d.com/3-gate-pass brushed up with a fire from https://www.daz3d.com/iray-fireworx

    I used two emissive planes for lighting both in the cold light range one coming from the right back of the image and the other one from front left below

     

     

    Linwelly:

    I like the colors here - the extreme contrast makes everything pop! While the armor is not what I would go with, I'll ignore it as artistic choice. The hair is giving me mixed signals about the motion, though. There's a bit that's blowing off to the right, and a bunch that's blowing back or left to a lesser degree, and there's another bit that looks still. I don't know if she's standing in a pose to show off, standing ready for an attack, standing ready to be attacked, or in the middle of an attack.

     

    nice observation on the hair movement. The pose is suppoed to be the firm stand right before the next move while there has been movement before. I was originally plannung to give the full figure but then chose the close up to show more of her face. The impression of threat was the one I wanted to transport the most.

     

    I'm gonna have to go with Linwelly who has been an an unwitting inspiration to me since the very beginning of this.

    Of course that also means I have to critique which is really hard.

     

     

    First I love the bold contrast in this.  It approaches monochromatic but is accented by the violets and flame orange off to the left.  The pose is dynamic.  I particularly like the use of hard lighting to accentuate contrast.  I'm used to seeing darkness and soft shadow as a way to accentuate threat but the lighting here does that using bright glare and hard edges.  That will be the hardest thing to steal from this.

    In critique...

    Her hair is poking through her neck, shoulder and armor.  If the hair is not dForce it could be converted or repositioned manually.  It is also quite coarse.  This can be adjusted with cutout opacity in the surfaces tab to give it just a little more of a wispy character so it's not quite so straw-like.  Fussing with the glossy reflectivity or dual lobe specular values might give it some shine but that might not work as well as I envision it.  It might ruin the contrast which is so essential to the overall effect.  That said I really like the dynamic of flow in the back.

    I said some words on the hair above but yes there are quite some chages needed on that hair and it would be something that needs postwork, I didn't want to put a postworked image here to meke it easier for you to see how it looks without any sort of postwork.

    The use of DOF is great in the background but a little too strong in the foreground.  The edge of the Katana becomes too soft and it loses it's definition.  Even the forward hand is a bit too blurred.  I would consider splitting the difference in the f-stop and focal distance so you don't lose the DOF on the back panels of the armor but pick up the sword a little 'sharper' (yeah, it was a bad pun).  The katana could also (or alternatively) be brought closer to the body to bring it into better focus but I would still like just a tiny bit more definition on the leading hand. 

    look below at the quoate of ruris comment on the topic

    The face paint (well she actually has entire body paint but I mean the pink face paint) is very stark and contrasty but very flat.  The rest of the body paint is obviously laid over the skin and you see texture in it.  There should be some surface texture to the face paint as well.  I would add a bump map to get a little texture into it so it looks like a layer.  It's especially notable because the lips have the underlying bump seeming to affect them and look perfectly natural as if that is real face paint.  I do think the effect is actually there in all of the face paint but is just still too subtle except for the lips.

    As I said the dark skin was from the Eilish character and I don't think it was meant to be a paint layer. It might be that my tinkering with the colour made it look more painted than the original. But it seems it would need some work to make it look like skin :D

    Finally the eyelashes really play the monochromatic contrasts but seem a little flat as it they are facepaint instead of white eyelashes.  Not sure what I'd do about that because I'd actually have to look at what I was working with.  And once again I'm not sure that in this case change would be good.  They really draw your eye to hers and since it's pretty clear once you look in her eyes taht she is about to kill you....well that's an important element of this piece.

    the eyes were meant as the draw in point of the image the lashes ebing so overly white might be a result from the light coming from front below, I might be possible to tunr their opacitiy a bit down so they don't overreact with the light and give the flat look.

    That's all I got and I had to work for that.

    Now it's time to begin the long and painful process of trying to develop my own take on a Linwelly.

    Rather than try to directly reproduce her image I was inspired to attempt a African take on the idea (I also might have had Marvel's Black Panther on my mind at the time) to see how the situation and setting change the feel of the whole.

    Wish me luck, I'm gonna need lots of it.

     

     

    Ruris said:

    @Linwelly:

    Sweet ninja striking a pose for a cosplay photoshoot or just looking badass before stabbing some faces, my favorite. 

    Some users has suggested the in-focus issue, this is a question I ask myself often too, does it make sense to change the camera fstop to some crazy numbers so that you can get everything in focus or try to be realistic? Or do you just stand back and shoot and crop the image for a closer look.

    The warm bokeh on the left side could be a fireplace, brazier? Might try to use a different colored rim light. Hair issue, postwork by blur layer should help.

    Ok a work on the focal point here. Yes it was a decision I made to take the focus on the eyes and leave the f/stop at 22 so that the tip of the sword reaches out of the focus.

    I think that keeping the edge sharp in focus would be an interesting option as well (as I'm making comics and keep thinking in sequential images this would actually be a really nice follow up image) so yes there is never only one solution for an image, and that's why I'm looking forward to what you come up with :D

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,799
    Ruris said:

    Took almost 6hours for all processes (excluding render time). Most probably way too long. Need to hear from more experienced user, if this can be done in 2h or something. Anyway, here's my ninja fox girl.

    https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/838726/

    when I started I needed about two weeks (using all the evenings) to make a full scene with everything finished :D

    How long you take is depending on so many factors, at the moment I'm creating a new character for my personal pen and paper group and I've been fiddling on and off with her for close to 6 hours now, until I had every detail the way I wanted. ( now she needs a horse...)

    So I like your Kitsune take on the image, very dynamik pose, interesting choice of colours, nice light! But it feels to me that she doesn't really belong into that environment, she has no connection from the colour and is not touching it at any point so she feels distached to me. One other thing that is a bit of nitpicking is her direction of view. it is not into the camera but it's not really enough off camera to follow the motion direction off the image. My suggestion would be to twist her a tad more around her y axis so she really looks out of the image.

     

  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,818
    Ruris said:

    One thing that I'm really interested, how long does it take for more experienced user to perform all the steps, to create the samples for this contest?


    It can wildly vary from image to image and artist to artist. I know I've had some images I've done take me days (to this day) and others that can take me a couple hours. It also depends on whether I go for a more straight render out of DS with very little postwork or whether I decided to fiddle forever in Photoshop (if I decide to fiddle then you can definitely add on extra hours to the process LOL)

    For straight renders, I've had where it took me 10+ hours to get everything set up just the way I wanted and the lighting etc. I've had other times where something just pulled together and only took about an hour. If you add in dynamic cloth etc then you can definitely add more time to the process since getting everything flowing the way you picture can take some time and a lot of simulating. I try to just enjoy the process and try to let the image take the time it wants/needs to take smiley

  • dragoneyes002dragoneyes002 Posts: 205
    edited August 2019
    Ruris said:

    Took almost 6hours for all processes (excluding render time). Most probably way too long. Need to hear from more experienced user, if this can be done in 2h or something. Anyway, here's my ninja fox girl.

    https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/838726/

     6 hr set up is not taking that long for the result you achieved. some renders can run 20+ hrs others less than 1hr. The set up can take days if not longer on some which is why so many use premade environments as is without altering the textures or using drop in backgrounds just to have more time to work on the character/s which doesn't even account for props clothing hair lighting...etc.

    I like to create one off props as well as rigged props on another program IE: a fully rigged Tachikoma which can take quite a while on their own without ever touching Daz yet. 

    Post edited by dragoneyes002 on
  • RurisRuris Posts: 123
    edited August 2019

    L'adair, Elliandra, Linwelly: Thanks for your comments and compliments. I removed the border from earlier version. Fixed the ears issue. 
    Toned down the yellow hue a bit, looks more pleasing to me but could use more eyes. The warping tools to adjust skirt still need some practice, will try to implement on future piece.
    On the eye contact, I have tried the Look at Camera tools too. Its super nice, but when I look at cosplay photos, often models are not looking directly at the lens, thought to introduce some imperfection.
    I could use a good zen garden, bamboo grove setup, any ideas?

    And appreciate you all for sharing the efforts you take to create art too. Sometimes I wonder if being reasonably good is too far.

    https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/839001/

     

    Post edited by Ruris on
  • Kaye KayeKaye Kaye Posts: 210
    edited August 2019

    @Leana - I've lightened behind the figure and snakes with Ps (I have a render baking, so no Daz for me for the next few days. Yes, my machine is...s-l-o-w!) which I think has improved the look.

    @Elliandra - I've lightened the snake eyes with Ps. I think it is working better, especually with the improved definition of the snakes.

    Thanks for the suggestions! :)

     

    medusa5.jpg
    1500 x 2250 - 2M
    Post edited by Kaye Kaye on
  • Kaye KayeKaye Kaye Posts: 210

    Oh, and is it okay to have a stab at another image and post it? Something I bought yesterday made me think of @Linwelly's image.

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,051
    Kaye Kaye said:

    Oh, and is it okay to have a stab at another image and post it? Something I bought yesterday made me think of @Linwelly's image.

    Of course, you can post as many as you want.

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,051
    Kaye Kaye said:

    @Leana - I've lightened behind the figure and snakes with Ps (I have a render baking, so no Daz for me for the next few days. Yes, my machine is...s-l-o-w!) which I think has improved the look.

    @Elliandra - I've lightened the snake eyes with Ps. I think it is working better, especually with the improved definition of the snakes.

    I like the new version:)

    Both changes make the snakes stand out more.

     

  • AZDigitalArtistAZDigitalArtist Posts: 775
    edited August 2019

     

    Elliandra said:
    muddwoman said:

    Okay, I chose the lovely Elliandra image of the wailing woman.  I used Victoria 4.2, the Art of the Dance/Swan Lake ballerina tutu, and Pyrit hair.  What I thought could be improved in the image was more of a sense of the drama to add to the scene and the feel of the image.  By taking it overhead, I thought it would give a new perspective and focus right on her tortured face, and the addition of the colored lighting helps add to the mood.  I wanted my model more sad than openly wailing.  This is what I pictured when I thought about this challenge.  Be kind; I literally started doing renders just a few weeks ago.  Thanks!

     

    Brilliant job on the render the expression and lighting they're really nice! I also like how the hair looks like it's flopping back as she's looking up!

    The only things I might change really nit-picky but I'm OCD like that lol.

    1. If you place a spotlight set to Specular Only in the light options pointing at her eyes then you'll get some more depth to them and make them really pop. I'd suggest sticking with a mid to darker grey for the light color so it doesn't blow them out on render.

    2. The dress bodice could use a stronger bump or displacement addition to it, this can be done in the surface tab in Studio I would suggest using Bump as you don't have to worry about it poking into the figure. If the dress doesn't have a bump map you can always just plug the color map into the Bump Image location and fiddle with the strength!

    Elli

    Elli, I am overwhelmed at your kind words!  Thank you for your suggestions as well.  I will figure out what you are talking about, lol....I come from the Photoshop world, so I know what a bump map is, at least.  I need to watch some of the videos.  I kind of just jumped in, feet first.   DAZ is is a huge change for me, but oh, so much fun!

    Post edited by AZDigitalArtist on
  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,818

    There are a fair few videos here that can help get you started: https://www.youtube.com/user/WWWDAZ3DCOM/featured

    Also be sure to take a peak at some of the other challenges as we generally include links and information in them that can help with specific topics smiley

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